wedding was in a fortnight’s time. The bride-to-be, Amelia, was still in Sydney, where she was finishing off work for her merchant bank. Dev was planning on flying there to collect her and their parents and some other Devereaux guests. That meant Ava would be playing hostess to Juan-Varo de Montalvo for a short time.
The season was shaping up to be absolutely brilliant for the great day: the sky was so glorious a blue she often had the fancy she was being drawn up into its density. Despite that, they were all praying the Channel Country wouldn’t be hit by one of its spectacular electrical storms that blew up out of nowhere and yet for the most part brought not a drop of rain. For once rain wasn’t needed after Queensland’s Great Flood—a natural disaster that had had a silver lining. After long, long punishing years of drought, the Outback was now in splendid, near unprecedented condition.
Kooraki was a place of extraordinary wild beauty, with every waterhole, creek, billabong and lagoon brimming with life-giving water that brought an influx of waterbirds in their tens of thousands. So the station was in prime condition—the perfect site for the marriage between her brother and her dear friend Amelia.
Guests were coming from all over the country, and Juan-Varo de Montalvo was, in fact, the first overseas visitor to arrive. In his honour Dev had arranged a polo match and a post-polo party for the coming weekend. Invitations had gone out, generating huge interest. Most Outback communities, with their love of horses, were polo-mad. De Montalvo would captain one team, Dev the other. The two men had forged their friendship on the polo field. Dev had even visited the de Montalvo estancia—a huge ranch that ran Black Angus cattle, located not all that far from the town of Córdoba. So here were two polo-playing cattlemen who had every reason to relate to each other.
How Juan-Varo de Montalvo would relate to her was an entirely different matter. As she moved, her heart picked up a beat a second. Sometimes the purely physical got the better of the mind. She consoled herself with that thought.
Both men looked up as Ava began her descent of the curving staircase, one slender hand trailing over the gleaming mahogany banister. Ava, herself, had the oddest sensation she was walking on air. Her blood was racing. She felt in no way comfortable, let alone possessed of her usual poise. How could feelings run so far ahead of the rational mind?
“Ah, here’s Ava,” Dev announced with brotherly pride.
Dev’s eyes were on his sister and not on Juan-Varo de Montalvo, whose dark regard was also fixed on the very fair young woman who was making her way so gracefully to them. He had known in advance she was beautiful. Dev had boasted many times that he had a beautiful sister. But the reality far exceeded his expectations. He was used to beautiful women. He was a man who loved women, having grown up surrounded by them—doting grandmothers, aunts, female cousins. He adored his mother. He had three beautiful sisters—one older, very happily married with a small son, his godchild, and two younger, with legions of admirers—but something about this young woman sent a jolt of electricity shafting through his body.
He could see beneath the grace, the serene air and the poise that she was oddly vulnerable. The vulnerability seemed inexplicable in a woman who looked like an angel and had grown up as she had, with every material advantage. Dev had told him about her failed marriage. Maybe she saw it as a humiliation? A fall from grace? Maybe she was guilty of heedlessly breaking a heart—or worse, inflicting deliberate pain? He had been brought up to frown on divorce. He had lived with two people—his mother and father—who had made a wonderful life together and lived side by side in great harmony.
She had to tilt her head to look up at him. There was a curiously sad look in her jewel-like eyes, the same dazzling aquamarine as her brother’s. She had flawless skin, with the luminescence of a pearl. Few women could claim a face so incandescent.
It was in all probability a symptom of jet lag, but he felt a distinct low-pitched hum in his ears. Her smile, lovely and effortlessly alluring, seemed to conceal secrets. He had a certainty it was she who had ended her marriage. A cruel thing for an angel to do. One would expect such coldness only of a young and imperious goddess, who would only be loved for as long as it suited her.
Ava released a caught breath. “Welcome to Kooraki, Señor de Montalvo,” she said with a welcome return of her practised poise. Heat was coming off the Argentine’s aura. It was enveloping her. “It’s a pleasure to have you here.” It was necessary to go through the social graces even when she was en garde and taking great pains not to show it.
“Varo, please,” he returned, taking her outstretched hand. His grip was gentle enough not to crush her slender fingers, but firm enough not to let her escape. “It’s a great pleasure to be here. I thought it impossible you could be as beautiful as Dev has often described, but now I find you are even more so.”
She felt the wave of colour rise to her cheeks but quickly recovered, giving him a slightly ironic look, as though judging and rejecting the sincerity of his words. “Please—you mustn’t pander to my vanity,” she returned lightly. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had caused her to flush. She didn’t like the enigmatic half-smile playing around his handsome mouth either. The expression in his dark eyes with their fringe of coal-black lashes was fathoms deep. She was angry with herself for even noticing.
“I had no such thought,” he responded suavely, somehow establishing his male authority.
“Then, thank you.”
There was strength behind his light grip on her. As a conductor for transmitting energy, his touch put her into such a charged state it caused an unprecedented flare of sexual hostility. It was as though he was taking something from her that she didn’t want to give.
The warning voice in her head struck up again. You have to protect yourself from this man, Ava. He could burn down all your defences.
That she already knew.
“I find myself fascinated with Kooraki,” de Montalvo was saying, including Dev in his flashing white smile. “It is much like one’s own private kingdom. The Outback setting is quite extraordinary.”
“From colonial times every man of ambition and means came to regard his homestead as the equivalent of the Englishman’s country manor,” Dev told him. “Most of the historic homesteads were built on memories of home—which was in the main the British Isles.”
“Whereas our style of architecture was naturally influenced by Spain.”
Dev turned his head to his sister. “As I told you, Estancia de Villaflores, Varo’s home, is a superb example.”
“We have much to be proud of, don’t we?” de Montalvo said, with some gravitas.
“Much to be grateful for.”
“Indeed we do.” Brother and sister spoke as one.
Ava was finding de Montalvo’s sonorous voice, with its deep dark register, making her feel weak at the knees. She was susceptible to voices. Voice and physical aura were undeniably sensual. Here was a man’s man, who at the same time was very much a woman’s man.
He was dangerous, all right.
Get ensnared at your peril.
They exchanged a few more pleasant remarks before Dev said, “I’m sure you’d like to be shown your room, Varo. That was a very long trip, getting here. Ava will show you upstairs. I hope you like what we’ve prepared for you. After lunch we’ll take the Jeep for a quick tour of the outbuildings and a look at some of the herd. An overview, if you like. We have roughly half a million acres, so we’ll be staying fairly close in for today.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” de Montalvo returned, with a sincere enthusiasm that made brother and sister feel flattered.
“Your luggage is already in your room, Varo,” Ava told him, aware she was struggling with the man’s magnetism. “One of the staff will have brought it up by now, taking the back entrance.” Although de Montalvo had travelled a very long way indeed, he showed no signs whatever of fatigue or the usual jet lag. In fact